The Chindian (Indianized Chinese food) is tasty & nice but lacks on the authenticity front. For ‘close to authentic Chinese food’ in Gurgaon, YUMMRAJ recommends The Monk, Galaxy Mall. However, if u do not give a damn to authenticity & r willing to dig into anything tasty, Dine Esty is a good choice. Infact its a very good choice for a nice evening out with some good food.

The main dining hall – another view

We have been to Dine esty several times & always had been eating at the Live Japanese Teppanyaki (Japanese Grill) Counter. This time around we decided to sit in the main dining hall & ordered some Chinese (turned out to be tasty Chinjabi) alacarte section.

starter at Dine Esty

The menu card was almost 10 pages long & really requires a great deal of study by foodies to decide on food. Too many interesting names pop up before the eyes & ity becomes a challenge (in a good way) to narrow down & finalize the order. In the menu card there are sections like soups, dimsums, starters, main course etc like everyone else but all these section in turn have detailed sub sections – chicken, pork, lamb, vegetarian, duck, fish, crab, seafood. I saw some interesting items like seafood dimsum, crystal dimsum, pork gouza, prawn harkaw (a dimsum that has potato starch as wrapper) – I fondly remembered harkaw that we had at Royal china. To summarize, every Chinese place has sections but this one was in great details.

The interior has three sections – a lounge & bar setting on the left (as u enter) & this is covered by a see-through wooden partition. Then there is the Main dining Hall with Restaurant setting & at the end is the Live Teppanyaki counter where u can sit on the counter & njoy seeing the food being prepared in front of u. A chat with the chef is also an interesting option. Getting the food made with ur choice of sauces is surely another option.

The lounge & bar setting behind the wood partition

The Japanese concept of teppanyaki is very cool though – it is essentially a flat Metal plate (say 1meter by 2 meters) that is heated at all times. The customers have the option to sit around this hot plate & the Chef stir fries veggies / fish / meats in front of u & serves fresh out of the Teppan.

Stir frying on the teppan right in front of the customer seats – u see the cooking right infront of u

Inspite of the fact that the sauces here r tweaked to cater to Indian tastes – the overall taste is very enjoyable. ………….. Infact not too many people might b able to appreciate the 100% original taste the way it is served in Japan or China. I Do love the original though & do not mind the tweaked versions at times.

Detailed Description – In case u have the time to enjoy reading:

IN this section, I will mention my latest visit first & then a review of the second last visit.

The latest visit:

We ordered appetizer double cooked lamb – Chinese lou (the word ‘lou’ means roast) in chilli hoisin sauce Double fried lamb – It was very very good to taste. It turned out to be Slices of lamb sautéed with sauces , carrot, onions & chillies. Taste was excellent. Every piece of lamb, was not soft but crispy outside. The moment we wud bite a piece, the juices wud burst out in the mouth. Very interesting texture & interesting combo of not soft but juicy. The only catch is – Since it is not soft & has fibers, people with bad teeth like me might have meat fibers stuck in between the teeth – that’s something that Dine Esty cannot do anything about, anyway. Really liked the dish.

Excellent Double Cooked Lamb

For main course we ordered Steamed fish with garlic & spring onion. We had 4 options of fish to choose from – pomfret, sole, grouper or sea bass – we went with sole. The text in the menu card read ‘Sliced fish marinated with seasoning , steamed, garnished with chopped spring onion, carrots & roasted minced garlic.’ So we remembered the similar dish that we had in Royal China. Waiting staff also recommended.

Steamed fish with garlic & spring onion

Sadly it turned out to be one of the worst fish pieces I have had in a while – To Punjabify the pure Chinese dish that usually has a thin gravy, it seems the guys in the Kitchen added corn flour. That was the worst thing that cud have happened. The corn flour formed a coat over the fish piece & made the taste & texture horrible – We cud not finish & left some pieces to be thrown out. The thickened gravy was not so bad though.

We also ordered pork with Han Heung sauce – Chef Chen Han Heung’s Hakka community special from Guangdong province, China. This was very enjoyable, good, soft & tasty. A little short of ‘superb’ though.

Pork with Han Heung sauce

We had Singapore mixed rice noodle with all the above – super thin noodles made with rice (instead of flour). It had eggs & miscellaneous meats in it. It was not bad.

Singapore mixed rice noodle

We washed down all this with Virgin Mojito that was good & Italian Smooch that was just about OK – bland.

The two virgin drinks

The second last visit: Eating at the Teppanyaki bar

We started the dinner with a soup – Pepper lemon broth with shrimp balls. It was a superb clear soup – fresh lemon peel, pepper had the punch, lemon gave the light tangy taste & the prawn balls very interesting too – they burst out with flavors once u bit them – outstanding.

the excellent soup

For the Teppan, we went for Norwegian salmon lemon butter soya – heavenly. The fish pieces were juicy but flaky within & charred from outside, the lemon butter soya sauce was too good.- marvelous taste.

Awesome Salmon lemon Butter

Pork with bamboo shoot & zucchini in demi glazed sauce was also very good. Soft but not melt in the mouth , slightly crisp outer layer pork pieces were too good – very enjoyable.

pork with Bamboo shoot

We also had Chahan – a mixed fried rice made with sticky rice – slightly low on salt but good to eat after we added salt. This was also made on the teppan in front of us.

Chahan

We were too full for dessert & hence just managed to roll out of the eatery. Just managed to wash down the good food with some nice virgin Mojito.